Face it. When it comes to environmental protection, the EU can be awfully strict. Drop just a single molecule of something hazardous out somewhere in nature, and expect it to be treated like the crime of the century. That’s the way it usually is with eco-bureaucrats, except of course when it comes to green energies like ugly wind turbines. There everything suddenly has no real environmental impact, and so they get a free pass.

With the continued expansion of wind parks out to sea, over the coming decades thousands of tons of toxic metal compounds will be brought into the North and Baltic Seas. The reason is the use of so-called sacrificial anodes. These are for preventing the corrosion of the steel bases of the wind parks.

Spiegel describes how these sacrificial anodes, which contain heavy metals, dissolve over time in the water and that no environmental impact study has ever been conducted. According to Spiegel just the interior corrosion protection of each steel tower will dump up to ten tons of aluminum over its 25-year lifetime. Yes, “each tower”!

With plans to install 6500 turbines out to sea by the year 2020, Spiegel calculates that this means 13,000 tons of aluminum rubbish could end up in the North Sea.

The German weekly also writes that the electrical method of corrosion protection, such as that used on ships, is also possible, but that the method is too expensive due to “higher maintenance requirements”. After all, wind power is already unaffordable enough!

So in Europe are 13,000 tonnes of chemical rubbish getting dumped into the sea anything to really worry about? Obviously not if they comes from “green” sources.

Obviously the greed for profits has blinded the wind turbine industrialists to the damage they inflict on all creatures in the food chain including humans which will suffer the most because the heavy metals get concentrated up the food chain.

let’s refine the argument, ok, so the alu isn’t harmful, I agree, but here goes: It has to be MINED (meaning, injuring Gaia) and REFINED (meaning energy waste) so the sacredness of wind turbines is now gone.

What we have to achieve is that the sods of the world admit that their gods, the wind turbines, are unclean.

Well, aluminium is the most abundant metal, (˜ 8.3% by weight) and the third most abundant element in the earths crust. So its not exactly possible to pollute the earth with aluminium. Its not a heavy metal either (airplanes are made of it). As far as Al goes, relax.

So, these are the plans…”With plans to install 6500 turbines out to sea by the year 2020…”

I recall reading some years back the useful life expectancy of wind turbines at sea is relatively short. The data I recall included 10–12 years of the UK coast, and 12—15 years off the Danish coast—not the 30 as proclaimed.

All that money to build and install, power provided is a fraction of rated capacity from data you’ve provided, Pierre, a relatively short useful life span, killing of 10s (100s ?) of thousands of bats and birds, and now, toxicity from heavy metals?

And these uneconomical, ecological, and environmental disasters get a free pass in the name of saving the planet from anthropogenic CO2?

Here https://www.energy-charts.de/price.htm you can see how renewables are reducing the wholesale price of electricity in Germany through the “merit order effect”. So I get a pissed off at idiots who are causing my electricity bill to be higher than necessary because of some irrational hatred of renewables.

And “I get pissed off at idiots” who don’t even know the difference between spot market prices and what the consumer pays. German electric bills have skyrocketed over the past years because of the mandatory feed-in-tariffs and conventional power plants operating only at partial, money-losing capacity. My next post will illustrate this.

“So I get a pissed off at idiots who are causing my electricity bill to be higher than necessary because of some irrational hatred of renewables.”

LOL! So you don’t even know that consumers in Germany, California and Melbourne (3 regions with comparably expensive electricity tariffs for private customers) do not pay bulk prices – and call other people idiots…

Now that you two have had the obligatory rant, how about addressing the fact that renewables lower wholesale prices? You see that does make electricity cheaper. Of course, your electricity supplier may not want to pass the saving on to you, but that just means more profits for them.

…which consists of all kinds of nasty, petroleum-derived chemicals, thanks for pointing out this overlooked multiple-polluting factor (first when the oil is drilled and second when it is refined and third when the paint dissolves and poisons baby seals).

Sacrificial anodes are used in water heaters in your homes. They last from 5 to 10 years and should be replaced before they before then. The sacrificial metal goes into the water but because it takes so long to be used up it has no effect on the water. The same will apply in wind parks.

you don’t know the differnce between bulk and private customer tariffs, and you don’t know the difference in corrosivity between seetwater and saltwater? Then I suppose you also do not know the energy density, and how many wind turbines (and batteries) it would take to replace one ordinary 300 MW gas power plant. Confirming my impression I have of the common renewables fanblocke.

I have asked previously on various websites, are these windmillers forced by law to remove redundant windmills both on and off shore?
All redundant north sea oil installations have to be safely disposed of by their owners, at no cost to the taxpayer.
Does anyone know the answer to this?

For on-shore this is the case in Germany after 20 year license expiration, they must be dismantled by the owner, I cannot imagine anything else for off shore, as Germans are extreme eco-loons and would never accept anything else. Licenses can be renewed but only at the will of the regulators.

Look, I know that you guys are against solving the AGW problem… but really… making a fuss about sacrificial anodes. Where are the big disasters from yesterday: you know, when you told us that an ice age was coming, that economies would fold, the lights would go out, we would all be living in caves, one world government, black helicopters etc. Aluminium is a bit meeh in comparison.

We are not against solving problems. We are against making up problems. Communism also solved the “problem” of capitalism during the 20th century. Unfortunately that solution was far, far worse than the “problem”.

Never before has Europe and the UK experienced so much pollution than as seen today with all the wind turbines built in the sea and built on land. They look bloody awful. The only winners are the manufacturers and recipients of government subsidies.

The only cheap, reliable, efficient and effective form of renewable energy is hydro-electricity.

I am amazed at the level of ignorance about “green” energy and specifically wind and solar. Amazing … I suggest you go read Google’s report on the subject to get you started. After a decade of research and $billions spent, their conclusion is that “green” energy is IMPOSSIBLE! … get that? … IMPOSSIBLE! … And it isn’t like Google didn’t try. They had some pretty smart people on the case, they spent (wasted) a heck of a lot of dough on the subject … result … they are pulling out of it …

Look, dumb_sses … it all comes down to one VERY simple formula … ENERGY DENSITY … PERIOD! … figure it out…

So the waste may be a lot of aluminum. Hope they had access to tons of crushed beverage cans during production…raw aluminum is typically extracted from bauxite ore at a cost in electrical energy that is astronomical!

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